1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a communication apparatus, a communication system, a video image display control method, which are utilized for, e.g., a TV phone, a TV conference system and so on, a program for carrying out this display control method, and a computer-readable storage medium storing the program.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, there has been actualized a high speed digital communication technology capable of transferring in a multiplexing manner data requiring a real-time characteristic such as moving image data, audio data etc, and data requiring a reliability of transfer such as still image data, control data etc. Further, a demand for connecting, to one single intra-home network, consumer audio/visual devices and consumer electric appliances that have hitherto been operated alone or through the devices' or appliances' own connections, has increased and been actualized by utilizing the high speed digital communication technology described above.
Further, in the field of TV phones, there is increasingly a demand for displaying, to a party on the line, a video image obtained by a video cassette recorder (VCR), a digital camera etc. which are connected to the intra-home network.
The conventional TV phone, however, has such a problem that there is a lack of consistency in terms of a display mode at the party on the line in the case of transferring, for instance, the VCR image and the digital camera image so that these images can be displayed simultaneously at the party side, and the party on the line is therefore hard to recognize which is the VCR image or the digital camera image and so forth.
Moreover, since transfer of the plurality of video images requires a plurality of communication units, which is a problem in terms of costs.
Further, if possible to watching the video image of the VCR etc of the party on the line, it is expected that there will arise a user's demand for remote-controlling the video image.